Session

The Session plugin helps you understand the work, choose what comes next, continue it elsewhere, coordinate local sessions, and learn from session evidence. Pick the capability that answers your question; these skills are not a required sequence.

Choose by intent

Mermaid updated 2026-10-31

What you need	Skill	What it produces
Check that the agent understands your goals and problem	Align	An explicit alignment exchange about intent, success criteria, assumptions, and direction; no project changes.
Catch up on what happened while you were away	Debrief	A concise account of an interval from visible session history only; no tools or recommendation.
See where the work stands against its goal	Sitrep	Current progress, remaining commitments, risks, and open questions from established sources checked read-only; no recommendation.
Regain the big picture of a long or compacted thread	Reorient	The whole thread's arc from its full transcript, current state with drift checked, and a recommendation.
Decide the next action and understand why	Next Steps	A justified recommendation and who can take it; the skill does not execute it.
Understand choices the agent already offered	Explain Options	Context, trade-offs, and a recommendation for one pending decision; it asks you to choose and does not act.
Check whether a claimed blocker or extra work is necessary	Must We?	An evidence-based verdict, the consequence of skipping it, and the smallest sufficient path; no automatic execution.
Let another agent or person continue the work	Handoff	Portable goals, state, decisions, evidence, remaining work, and approval boundaries.
Exchange addressed work across local sessions	Messaging	A durable inbox and shared log, with manual fallback and separately verified finite delivery.
Continue native history in another existing worktree	Fork to Destination	Alpha native-fork guidance with optional supported history import; it creates no native fork and transfers no worktree changes.
Keep a readable conversation archive	Export Transcript	Sanitized Markdown to review before sharing; an archive, not native session transfer.
Find a past Claude Code, Codex, or Cursor session	Search	Ranked, redacted candidates with resume hints; reads local stores without writing to them.
Use or understand Session Toolkit commands	Seshtk CLI	A verified command workflow with explicit session selection, coverage, and artifact paths; execution requires the external CLI.
Learn from an invocation or bounded episode	Retro	Evidence-backed lessons and improvement proposals; it does not apply them.

Align checks what you mean and runs only when explicitly invoked. Debrief reports what happened over an interval, using only history already visible. Sitrep reports where the established work stands now, and can check the sources it already uses read-only. Next Steps recommends what should happen next, without starting it.

Explain Options focuses on one choice the agent already offered. It explains what separates the options, recommends, and asks you to decide; it does not choose or execute. Must We checks whether a claimed blocker, approval request, or proposed extra work is necessary. It checks the evidence and existing authorization, upholds real gates, and recommends the smallest sufficient path. Neither skill automatically resumes work.

Complexity Review remains a separate standalone skill. Must We can use it as optional analysis when available and permitted; it is not included in Session or required for a verdict.

Reorient is the broader choice when the whole thread has become hard to follow. It recovers the full transcript through Export Transcript, checks current state, and recommends a next action; it labels the result partial when history cannot be recovered. Retro instead reviews a bounded episode for lessons, from a different exact reviewing session, with frozen transcript and activity evidence.

Debrief and Sitrep may point to Next Steps when work remains, but never invoke it. That pointer uses the local next-steps member in Session; standalone installs can use the standalone skill. Their presence does not make these skills a required sequence.

Seshtk CLI is a broad entrypoint for toolkit identity, discovery, reads, search, export, sensitive activity, and Codex evidence. The dedicated Search and Export Transcript skills remain independent choices with their own bundled runtimes.

Installation and names

Install the Session plugin using the Installation guide. Every member also has a standalone form. The names for Align, Debrief, Sitrep, Next Steps, Explain Options, and Must We stay the same in both forms:

Plugin-local name	Standalone name
`align`	`align`
`debrief`	`debrief`
`sitrep`	`sitrep`
`reorient`	`reorient`
`next-steps`	`next-steps`
`explain-options`	`explain-options`
`must-we`	`must-we`
`handoff`	`session-handoff`
`messaging`	`agent-messaging`
`fork-to-destination`	`session-fork-to-destination`
`export-transcript`	`session-export-transcript`
`search`	`session-search`
`seshtk-cli`	`seshtk-cli`
`retro`	`session-retro`

The linked guides cover both forms. For example, Claude Code uses /align for a standalone install and /session:align for the Session member. Other hosts use their own invocation syntax; packaging alone does not prove live discovery or permissions.

Align, Debrief, Sitrep, Next Steps, Explain Options, and Must We are instruction-only and have no runtime or package dependencies. The seshtk-cli member requires Node.js 22+ and the external @tkstang/session-toolkit package for execution (verified baseline 0.1.0). Installing the plugin does not install that CLI; explanations need no CLI installation, and the skill does not automatically download it.

Session does not require Consensus. Observer and Collaborative Observer are available standalone or through Consensus; neither is a Session member. Messaging can integrate with an exact active Collaborative Observer owner when the installed adapter proves that capability; neither observer is a Session dependency.

Fork to Destination remains alpha, with incomplete provider and end-to-end verification. Keep the installation verification limits in view for the plugin and its members.

Understand the work

Align — Explicitly check understanding of goals, problems, and success criteria.
Debrief — Explain what happened from the visible history of an interval.
Sitrep — Report current progress against the established goal.
Reorient — Rebuild the full thread's arc and recommend what comes next.

Choose a next action

Next Steps — Recommend a justified action without executing it.
Explain Options — Explain choices already offered, recommend, and ask without choosing or acting.
Must We? — Evaluate a claimed requirement and recommend the smallest sufficient path without executing it.

Continue or coordinate

Handoff — Prepare portable continuation context.
Messaging — Exchange addressed messages with explicit receipt and delivery boundaries.
Fork to Destination — Prepare alpha native-fork guidance, with optional supported history import.

Inspect or learn

Export Transcript — Save a sanitized conversation archive.
Search — Find a past local session from a fuzzy description.
Seshtk CLI — Explain or run Session Toolkit commands using the external CLI.
Retro — Review a bounded episode and propose improvements.